


Same Old Hands

by Semianonymity



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Caretaking, F/M, Gen, Grooming, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-05
Updated: 2012-09-05
Packaged: 2017-11-13 15:48:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/505157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Semianonymity/pseuds/Semianonymity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eridan gives Jade a very confusing manicure, and some feelings are danced around, and it turns out okay in the end, surprisingly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Same Old Hands

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Cherrybaum!
> 
> The title comes from [Look How Far We've Come](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmGmog0ydrI) by Imagine Dragons.

Jade's not sure what it is.

Well, it's Eridan. She'd started touching him. She doesn't _get_ personal space. She knows just enough to know she doesn't get it. She's talked to Rose about it, wrapped up in Rose's arms and her face pressed into her neck for those extra inches of contact, breath coming too fast because sometimes it's overwhelming, the same sort of overload that perfume's become, her brain not quite dog enough to handle the sudden input, her nose too sensitive to keep from processing the information. But oh, she _aches_ for skin, and Rose is exquisite. Especially so. Especially when she holds onto Jade just as desperately as Jade holds her.

(It makes Jade feel less alone, which makes Jade feel bad for her feelings. She shouldn't! If she's good, she should want Rose happy! She shouldn't need Rose to be just as lost as she is.)

She's good with the others. She'd figured out how and when contact's appropriate, working semi-systematically, her instincts all wrong. She doesn't touch the trolls, she doesn't push Dave, just takes what he gives, she only play-wrestles with John, she only touches Davesprite in private, where no one else can see him relax and where no one else—except sometimes John—can see how her hands sometimes sink into him a quarter-inch, the first layers of his body like jelly, only warm and fizzy against her skin.

With Eridan, it's different. She's not sure how it happened. She's not sure what she did. It escalated: handshakes (they'd talked about human culture, and she wasn't sure if she'd said she'd never shaken anyone's hand before, but she'd been thinking about it) and then bumps on the shoulder and it had been so _easy_ to lean against him when she laughed, so easy to sit next to him while she worked on the Crosshairs, fingers nimbler than his and more educated and he'd listened to her while she worked, tried to get the theory, sat through her—terrible!—descriptions of what was going on, until she'd worked out how to explain even the things that were really intuitive and basic. And she'd gotten used to him until she'd started thinking about his skin, too, she knows it's cool, usually a little dry, like a frog's skin, permeable, she wonders if he can absorb oxygen directly from the water, just a supplement to his gills. Does he pick up pollutants in the water? She wonders what his hair feels like, but she doesn't think it's neutral ground that would be safe to touch, so she doesn't have an answer. She wonders if her own hair feels the same. It's the same color. Hers is wild, his is not, and it's probably stiff with styling product, she thinks, she's ruffled Dave's hair more than once when he's made an "ironic" (it makes her laugh and laugh—he can be really transparent!) attempt to style it. But maybe troll hair feels different. It _looks_ different, close-up.

And now she's leaning against his side, simultaneously taut with awareness and relaxed because he fits perfectly, she fits perfectly, even if the sharp point on the edge of a fin is poking her neck. (He's still just slightly shorter than her, though probably not for long, and it makes her giggle mostly because it _does_ irritate him.) He's looking at her hand, which is resting over one of his. His fingers are big, with big knuckles, kind of knobbly, even though they're—she's not sure. Well-taken-care-of. His callouses, gun callouses, are rubbed smooth. She doesn't think it's just his skin. She's seen Feferi's hands, which are rougher. He doesn't have any of the little nicks and dings that Jade has. A few of hers are usually heading towards infection, because she chews on her fingers. It didn't used to happen like that, but there are more people here—more disease? Pathogens her body doesn't have a long familiarity with? Maybe the saltwater had kept them cleaner. She'd gone swimming a lot—wading, really. Either way, he has to feel the little pulse of heat at the corner of her thumbnail. The nail itself is rough, strong—which is good, useful for prying at things, for scrabbling under too-tight seals and scraping away residue and prying at staples and small nails and limpets (tasty little saltwater bites, Eridan had been so excited to find out that she'd eaten them) and whatever else. Her nails still break, even if they're strong. When they get too long, she chews them off, or they break. There's a little blood-blister trapped under one, a dark black-purple spot.

Eridan's fingernails are lacquered, clear and shiny, or maybe it's nail polish, Jade thinks, looking at them. It matches his gold rings. Jade doesn't like rings, they get in the way, they make her too hyper-aware of her hands, they itch at her attention. They look good on his fingers, even if they're silly and pretentious.

She feels suddenly, terribly shy. Over-exposed, and attention's never bothered her before, but there's this yawning void that has nothing at all to do with her rough fingers against his even, gray skin and the watery wobble of his voice that stops suddenly. She doesn't always pay attention to what he's saying, and he'd said that that was okay, sounding somewhere between amused and hurt, and after once or twice, it really _had_ been okay and it had set something else at ease and it had left her feeling oddly happy. Again. He did that to her, somehow.

"Jade?"

"Yeah?" She turns to him, and does manage a smile. His eyes are silly, but she likes them, too. She wonders what he thinks about her face.

"Your nails are downright fuckin' atrocious."

He looks so upset that she does manage to giggle, even if her stomach clenches mysteriously. She knows it's because he'd been thinking the same thing, even if she's not sure _why_ that matters. Automatically, because she's thinking about it, she brings a hand to her mouth and chews on her index finger.

"Stop that!" he demands, snatching at her wrist, and Jade jumps, turns to face him and two of his fingertips are pressed into the center of her palm. His thumb against the fine bones you can feel in the back of her palm. It's so vulnerable that she wants to shiver, but not _badly_. Her heart's in the hollow of her mouth, or maybe something else, the taste of it thick on her tongue. She'd gotten used to sea-troll smell, not bad but _weird_ , but she's thinking about it again. Aware of it again. Maybe that's it. The little hairs on the back of her neck are prickling, but it's not the dogness, it's got nothing to do with hackling at a dangerous stranger or a misbehaving friend.

Jade shrugs. "It doesn't really matter!"

The silence is heavy. Eridan opens his mouth, looking terrified—that hits her low in the gut, so that her own mouth delineates a silent "oh" that goes nowhere—and then he closes it again and Jade suddenly wants to cry.

(She cries loud. Sobs. It scares the trolls, or pisses them off, it's usually one and the same! It terrifies Rose, makes John try to redirect her, makes Dave disappear. She's not going to cry. It makes her go all snotty and gross, and the misery often ends up overwhelming. There's just too much to cry about! It's paralyzing. And choking on her own sobs while she tries to growl at herself is nothing she wants to try again.)

"...Jade."

"Eridan," she says, and laughs, weakly. Eridan's fingers tighten around her wrist, but he manages to find words anyway. She's not sure what that means.

"I'm gonna do your nails," he tells her, very serious but maybe a _little_ self-aware. It's a question, either way, which Jade can answer.

"Okay!" she says, and she sounds really relieved, but maybe Eridan won't notice that.

They end up not in his hive, or her room—trolls don't really have friends over!—but in a side-room. It's neutral and private and Jade is really glad that there's no-one else there, because she flops down on the floor, and pats the ground next to her, hoping. Hoping that Eridan won't ask about the table, and why she's not sitting at it. But she doesn't want him across from her. If only because she's not sure she can meet his eyes right now.

His cape—which is stupid, but it's almost like he likes her teasing him about it—puddles partly in her lap, he's so close. She sighs happily, wanting to thump a tail that's not there, and smiles instead. He takes her hand and it's more like holding it, for now, because he's not doing anything yet. He was almost holding her hand before, wasn't he? Jade wonders why. He hasn't tried to come on to her, not for a long time. And she's glad, because it lets her be comfortable with his hand in hers and his breath and his elbow carefully avoiding her ribs—she thinks it might be because of gills, that he's taking care even though Jade doesn't have have them at _all_ , of course—

"Okay," he says, pulling out nail clippers, a file. Jade watches, eyes down-turned, as he trims away what hasn't been ripped off, yet, starting with her thumb. His fingers against hers. He makes a low hissing noise she hasn't heard before at the little bit of infection, muttering about Feferi and taking care of herself and weak human grossness, which Jade whaps his shoulder for.

It makes his voice settle momentarily into a low, happy sigh, that makes Jade blink. And smile.

The file is a weird rasp in the tips of her fingers, but his hands are cool and enveloping against hers, and she can feel them soak up her body heat—molecules excited, different movements through the void in-between particles—and that thought is somehow warming. He smooths her nail into a rounded tip, shorter than his, but even. Probably short because it needs to be even: it had broken off below the quick, grown back past it since then but still too short. He smiles at her hands as he finishes the first finger, and Jade can't help it. She buries her face in his shoulder, for just a second, feeling the one-two-three beat of his heart, four-five-six. Secondary and tertiary hearts, fainter as they move down his body. Then she curls her fingers into the fabric of his cape. Maybe that leaves her arm halfway around his body, which is compact and somewhat muscular and she thinks he thinks it's insufficient, which is somehow terrible, too. She whines, then bites it back when he looks up at her with fear edging at the corners of his mouth. She smiles, and that somehow manages to feel natural, too.

"You shouldn't be makin' those noises," he tells her, probably attempting for brisk.

"Well you can't tell me what to do!" Jade says before she can help it, and when he finally laughs the world stops spinning.

"...But do you. Like it?" he says, on the fourth nail of her right hand, even though he looks completely concentrated on her thick, unbroken nail, working for measured evenness that blends in with the rest of her fingers.

"Yes," Jade tells him immediately, she blurts it out, a little too loud.

"Good," he says, and she can't figure out his tone, it's just that his voice has gone thick, unexpectedly.

When he moves to her left hand, it leaves their foreheads almost bumped together, her pressed close so her fingers hover over his knee, him bent over his lap, and he's terribly careful. The horns, she thinks, and the sudden tenderness is almost painful. It catches in her throat.

The air is warm and damp between them with exhaled breath. Most of the air is very, very dry—Rose gets nosebleeds—and it makes Jade miss home, where there was always water, always wetness. She wonders how it is for Eridan. Is his skin supposed to feel wetter? She doesn't know but she really wants to find out, wants to figure out how to fix it for him if it needs fixing. She can design a humidifier. There has to be a way, especially if she can argue Equius into helping her.

"There," he says, and strokes across the backs of her fingers before he takes one, gently, pushing down the cuticle, all careful, focused attention and narrowed eyes, the yellow even more startling up close. Of course, her mostly-white eyes are probably just as bad. Does she look like a ghost, to him? She wonders what he thinks of her red blood, how he feels about the pink scars on the back of her left hand where it had gotten infected, sand in the wound, the thick tissue folding differently than her elastic skin, but that makes her think of Bec's warm body against her as she shivered through the pain of changing the bandages.

It feels weird to be fussed over like this!, Jade thinks. That shivers along her back, too, but it doesn't hurt, exactly.

There's nothing but the noise of their breathing as he carefully finishes, with a focus she usually doesn't see in him. And it's her, she thinks, watching his face, because he's not, for once. He's not thinking about himself, how other people see him, what he _looks_ like. That earns another shiver.

When he releases her hand, Jade clasps it in her other hand, the smooth press of her nails suddenly unfamiliar. She brings them close to her face to look at, and Eridan huffs a laugh at her, near-silent, but it's friendly. So she grabs his hand, and tugs it to her face—he lets it go, seadweller-strong, when did she stop thinking about that? She's not on guard; she could be in danger, this close. Well, as much in danger as she can be. And she pushes her face into his hand, smiling, and he can feel the movements of her mouth, even though it's hidden with her brown hand and his gray hand.

Too late, she realizes that it's an indirect kiss—but that's not the way she _meant_ it!—not exactly—well, now that the subject's there, now that she's thinking about it, his palm's odd against her lips, his hand—

She shifts back.

"Not yet," he tells her, oddly solemn—oddly careful! She notes that, then discards it, because this is to shivery-intimate for formality, for carefulness, she thinks, she can't put a name to it yet. “I'm not done yet, Jade.”

"Okay," she says. "If you say so, Eridan!" She's teasing, but he's not paying attention, just hesitating over a tube of something labeled in Alternian, before he quickly drops a little dollop in her hand. Or tries to, but he's oddly hesitant and he misses, flinching at the last second, swearing way too fervently when it drops to the ground. "...Eridan," she tells him, reproachful.

"I'm trying," he pleads, and she can feel how important this is, she knows it but she doesn't know why and she takes his free wrist in her hand, nails too short to scratch well, now, smoothed off. He seems to relax at that. Maybe looking at his handiwork, stark against his skin. With her hand there to anchor him, he drops some of the goop onto her hand, and Jade jumps at the coolness. But then he's rubbing it into her skin—moisturizer, she thinks. Scentless, she thinks a second later, with relief, nothing but a little seaweed tang, something chemical. Eridan's fingers slip for a second against her skin, until he sandwiches the hand between hers. His fingers are firm and so very careful and thorough, and her skin prickles. It's not arousal, she thinks. He works between her fingers. There's this warmth. That makes no sense, she's warmer than him. Her eyes are watching him work, focused on her hand, his hands. He's doing the same, she realizes, when she sneaks a glance up at his face through her eyelashes. His thumbs press across her palm, knead the ball of her thumb.

She's anticipatory when he finishes, giving him her other hand before he can reach for it. He smiles so widely at that, although it's aimed at his lap, the floor, maybe Jade's feet, her ankles.

Her skin is soft, and she rubs her hand along her face, mostly for the phantom sensation of his hands. Her hair is tumbling over his shoulder, so she tugs her head, pulling it off.

"You don't have to," he tells her, blinking in her direction.

"...Okay," she says, and when she leans close again, her hair falls forward with her. She doesn't tell him, _"I know!"_ and it's because she didn't know. She has no idea what's okay or not. But she wants it to go like this. She's glad he told her.

She sighs, involuntarily, when he strokes his fingers up hers, the inner side of them, careful. And again, when he pulls away.

"Now go wash them," he says, but he keeps his hands on her wrist.

"You should wash yours, too!" Jade tells him, wrinkling her eyes. He follows her, with a shrug and a smile. Their quiet little silence follows them. That's something of a relief.

Hands clean—Eridan's hand still moist, like it's holding onto the water, maybe it is the dryness, Jade thinks! It itches at her mind, unhappily—they follow each other back over to their little corner. Eridan's dogging her heels, but Jade's hanging back, sticking close. That seems right, for the situation.

"What color?" he asks her finally, half-shoving a bag of nail polish in her direction. She blinks at it, suddenly warmed.

"Thank you," she tells him, patting his chest—safely above his gills. She thinks!—and then repeats herself. "Thank you—" She's just not sure how to get the importance of it all across.

"Yeah," he says, and Jade comes up short, but it's not what she thinks, she thinks, which maybe makes no sense. She waits. "...Yeah, I'm—thank you, too, you know, Jade, you're pretty fucking—"

"Eridan!" she says, laughing.

"Just pick a color," he grumbles, so she goes through them.

Blue, purple, black—some shades of yellow. A green that matches her own color exactly, even if she's never seen Eridan wear anything like it, and she lingers over that, before...  
It's not his color purple, she thinks, lingering over something that's more pastel—more like Rose's color. But not quite that, either. It's—it's his color. Watered down. But she can't really ask for that shade of purple. It would be... Not right, she doesn't know. It's a thing with trolls. There...

She takes the pale purple anyway, at the last minute, fingers snatching it after hovering over the green. And she hands it to him. He's looking at it with his mouth twisted weird, like it's—like he's got a stomach ache, Jade thinks.

“Okay,” he says, selecting something clear. He puts the pale-purple varnish by one foot, which is bare, Jade realizes. His toes are fully webbed, and Jade memorizes the detail of them. He has prettier feet than her, too. Maybe—maybe swimming isn't as hard on feet as running around an island. “...This stuff first, it'll keep it strong and shit,” he mumbles.

The first touch of clear undercoat against her nail is unexpectedly cool. He's focused as a snake, just as unnaturally still, but he's breathing, too. It's not the smooth one-two-three circular pulse of breathing, like a land-troll, but the more familiar in-and-out that Jade knows from her own body, but with an odd stutter to it. She likes it, she thinks, even if it means she can't match her breathing to his.

He finishes one hand, starts on the other. They're both transfixed. He is as careful as if she'll explode, or as if something will break, catastrophically. Maybe it will, Jade thinks, and bites back a giggle that wants to be a sob.

They sit in silence as they wait for her fingers to dry, his hand a careful weight against the backs of hers, keeping them still. He's avoiding her eyes. She thinks. She can't be sure. And when he picks up the nail polish she picked out, he stares at it, almost glassy-eyed.

"No," he says suddenly, and Jade doesn't quite clench her hands—she'll need to get used to smooth nails biting into her palm; but right now her nails are tacky, still soft, and her fingers flex against the rough, slightly hairy fabric of Eridan's pants, it's different, her smoother skin still kind of slippery, not bad, but weird, different—and she bows her head, eyes squeezing closed. "It's not... That's just not your fuckin' color, Jade, I couldn't have your first manicure be a bad color, that's unconscionable. You—this one. It's a better color all-around."

It's the same purple as his hair, his sign, his blood, and Jade doesn't know what it _means_. She likes the idea, but she doesn't know why, so she's suspicious—logic, reasoning, know what you're getting into. Eridan Ampora is slippery.

It's just her nails.

"That's your color," she says, but she can't make it come out right, it's not more silliness, more teasing. It's easier to do that over text. She's not used to these things.

"...Sorry," he says, knuckles going dark as his fist suddenly squeezes around the little bottle, punishingly tight. But his other hand against her is still careful, until he pulls it away. Like it's a punishment. For him, not her, but she can't bear it.

She can't make her voice any louder than a whisper. "Eridan. I don't understand."

"Hah. Of _course_ you can't. I'm an idiot a'the highest caliber, Jade—"

"No!" she tells him, her hand over his mouth. "Tell me what the fuck is going on, Eridan! I mean it!"

He blinks at her, then blushes at the base of his fins. Jade relaxes despite herself.

"I—just thought you were..."

"...What?" she has to prompt, again.

"...Flirtin'," he says, and she feels sick. "I know it's fuckin' stupid, okay? I thought—I thought it was just my crush an' I wasn't gonna do anything on account of how I'm a stupid fuckup. And you flirted _back_ and I was going to ignore it but I don't have a heart made out of, of—coral, and I thought—maybe—it might be okay because it was pale, not concupiscient, for fucking once, and—"

"Pale," Jade repeats, because the word lights up sparks in her. She knows a little about moirallegiance. She thinks about wearing his color. "—Eridan."

"Just go away," he tells her, and she can't take it, he's _terrible_. And her hands are all different.

"You're being a drama queen!" she says, because it's true, and she cups his cheek in her palm. He looks up. "—I like that color. I like _your_ color, Eridan." Despite her best efforts, she's blushing. "If... you want to, would you finish?"

"Yes!" he tells her, eyes going wide and jubilant and suspiciously shiny with unshed tears, clutching at her hand. After too many seconds that are somehow still not quite long enough, he manages to shake his head and the eye contact breaks and he shakes the bottle of royal purple polish vigorously.

It goes on smoothly. His hands are steady, his eyes focused, and Jade feels terribly, terribly warm.

"Now you gotta stay still," he tells her.

"Awwww!" she complains. And they both pause, him half-way done. "...Maybe...you'll stay with me?"

He swallows. "Yeah." And smiles, his face going wide and sweet and fragile. “I still have one more coat to do. I couldn't leave your nails half-fuckin'-finished. I'm not that terrible.”

“Yes you are,” Jade tells him, tenderly, meaning it, and she leans into his shoulder, rests her forehead against his skull—just his horns to worry about, she feels sort of bad about that!—and breaths in the smell of his hair, which doesn't feel at all human against her skin, a little raspy. Maybe it's the styling gel, she thinks, and when she sighs, he echoes her. She imagines she can feel his whole body lit up, glowing the same way she is.

-End-


End file.
